Sharing in Google Docs just got easier

The ability to share my Google Docs is crucial to my productivity. My teammates and I often add comments to docs, collaboratively organize our feature-planning spreadsheet, and send links of interesting company presentations to each other. Like anyone, I want to make sure that I can share these materials with my colleagues easily and efficiently. This is why I’m happy to announce some improvements that make sharing your Docs easier while giving you even more control:

• Improved visibility options indicating how private or shareable a doc is: Google docs can now be identified as: private; anyone with a link; or public on the web.


• Private: Docs start out as private. When you first create a doc, you are the only person with access to it. From there, you can give access to other people.
• Anyone with the link: If you set your doc to “Anyone with the link,” it’s like an unlisted phone number. In the same way that anyone who knows an unlisted phone number can call it, anyone who knows the web address or URL of that doc can view it.
• Public on the web allows anyone the ability to find and access that particular doc on the web. For example, you could create a flyer for a concert, save it as a public doc, post a link to it on your blog. Public docs are automatically indexed by search engines like Google, so they may appear in search results as well.


• Access viewable at a glance: Visibility options for your docs now appear next to every doc title and in the docs list. You can easily see the full list of editors and viewers by clicking on the visibility option next to the doc’s title or on the Share button


• A cleaner, simpler interface: We’ve removed the three tab interface and replaced it with one dialog that lets you see who has access, manage access and invite others.


• Resettable doc URL: For a doc set to anyone with a link, you can reset the doc’s URL at anytime, which helps you better control who has access to your doc.


• Bulk changes in the docs list: You can now modify the sharing settings of multiple docs at a time by selecting multiple docs and selecting Share > Sharing settings.

To learn more about how these new visibility options work and for an overview of sharing in Google Docs, check out the videos below:





These changes are rolling out now and should be available to everyone in the next week. These improvements have really made a difference in my Google Docs experience. I can share much more quickly and always tell at a glance who has access to my docs. I hope you find them helpful too. Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Vikki Chou, Software Engineer